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Expositor's Bible Commentary Jeremiah 7:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, ; Jeremiah 8:1-22 ; Jeremiah 9:1-26 ; Jeremiah 10:1-25 ; Jeremiah 26:1-24 In the four chapters which we are now to consider we have what is plainly a finished whole. The only possible exception { Jeremiah 10:1-16 } shall be considered in its place. The historical occasion of the introductory prophecy, { Jeremiah 7:1-15 } and the immediate effect of its delivery, are recorded at length in the twenty-sixth chapter of the book, so that in this instance we are happily not left to the uncertainties of conjecture. We are there told that it was in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah," that Jeremiah received the command to stand in the forecourt of Iahvah’s house, and to declare "to all the cities of Judah that were come to worship" there, that unless they repented and gave ear to Iahvah’s servants the prophets, He would make the temple like Shiloh, and Jerusalem itself a curse to all the nations of the earth. The substance of the oracle is there given in briefer form than here, as was natural, where the writer’s object was principally to relate the issue of it as it affected himself. In neither case is it probable that we have a verbatim report of what was actually said, though the leading thoughts of his address are, no doubt, faithfully recorded by the prophet in the more elaborate composition. { Jeremiah 7:1-34 } Trifling variations between the two accounts must not, therefore, be pressed. Internal evidence suggests that this oracle was delivered at a time of grave public anxiety, such as marked the troubled period after the death of Josiah, and the early years of Jehoiakim. "All Judah," or "all the cities of Judah," { Jeremiah 26:2 } that is to say, the people of the country towns as well as the citizens of Jerusalem, were crowding into the temple to supplicate their God. { Jeremiah 7:2 } This indicates an extraordinary occasion, a national emergency affecting all alike. Probably a public fast and humiliation had been ordered by the authorities, on the reception of some threatening news of invasion. "The opening paragraphs of the address are marked by a tone of controlled earnestness, by an unadorned plainness of statement, without passion, without exclamation, apostrophe, or rhetorical device of any kind; which betokens the presence of a danger which spoke too audibly to the general ear to require artificial heightening in the statement of it. The position of affairs spoke for itself" (Hitzig). The very words with which the prophet opens his message, "Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel, Make good your ways and your doings, that I may cause you to dwell (permanently) in this place!" ( Jeremiah 7:3 , cf. Jeremiah 7:7 ) prove that the anxiety which agitated the popular heart and drove it to seek consolation in religious observances, was an anxiety about their political stability, about the permanence of their possession of the fair land of promise. The use of the expression " Iahvah Sabaoth " Iahvah (the God) of Hosts is also significant, as indicating that war was what the nation feared; while the prophet reminds them thus that all earthly powers, even the armies of heathen invaders, are controlled and directed by the God of Israel for His own sovereign purposes. A particular crisis is further suggested by the warning: "Trust ye not to the lying words, ‘The Temple of Iahvah, the Temple of Iahvah, the Temple of Iahvah, is this!"’ The fanatical confidence in the inviolability of the temple, which Jeremiah thus deprecates, implies a time of public danger. A hundred years before this time the temple and the city had really come through a period of the gravest peril, justifying in the most palpable and unexpected manner the assurances of the prophet Isaiah. This was remembered now, when another crisis seemed imminent, another trial of strength between the God of Israel and the gods of the heathen. Only part of the prophetic teachings of Isaiah had rooted itself in the popular mind-the part most agreeable to it. The sacrosanct inviolability of the temple, and of Jerusalem for its sake, was an idea readily appropriated and eagerly cherished. It was forgotten that all depended on the will and purposes of Iahvah himself; that the heathen might be the instruments with which He executed His designs, and that an invasion of Judah might mean, not an approaching trial of strength between His omnipotence and the impotency of the false gods, but the judicial outpouring of His righteous wrath upon His own rebellious people. Jeremiah, therefore, affirms that the popular confidence is ill-founded; that his countrymen are lulled in a false security; and he enforces his point, by a plain exposure of the flagrant offences which render their worship a mockery of God. Again, it may be supposed that the startling word, "Add your burnt offerings to your" (ordinary) "offerings, and eat the flesh (of them,)"{ Jeremiah 7:21 } implies a time of unusual activity in the matter of honouring the God of Israel with the more costly offerings of which the worshippers did not partake, but which were wholly consumed on the altar; which fact also might point to a season of special danger. And, lastly, the references to taking refuge behind the walls of "defenced cities," { Jeremiah 8:14 ; Jeremiah 10:17 } as we know that the Rechabites and doubtless most of the rural populace took refuge in Jerusalem on the approach of the third and last Chaldean expedition, seem to prove that the occasion of the prophecy was the first Chaldean invasion, which ended in the submission of Jehoiakim to the yoke of Babylon. { 2 Kings 24:1 } Already the northern frontier had experienced the destructive onslaught of the invaders, and rumour announced that they might soon be expected to arrive before the walls of Jerusalem. { Jeremiah 8:16-17 } The only other historical occasion which can be suggested with any plausibility is the Scythian invasion of Syria-Palestine, to which the previous discourse was assigned. This would fix the date of the prophecy at some point between the thirteenth and the eighteenth years of Josiah (B.C. 629-624). But the arguments for this view do not seem to be very strong in themselves, and they certainly do not explain the essential identity of the oracle summarised in Jeremiah 26:1-6 , with that of Jeremiah 7:1-15 . The "undisguised references to the prevalence of idolatry in Jerusalem itself ( Jeremiah 7:17 ; Jeremiah 7:30-31 ), and the unwillingness of the people to listen to the prophet’s teaching," { Jeremiah 7:27 } are quite as well accounted for by supposing a religious or rather an irreligious reaction under Jehoiakim-which is every way probable considering the bad character of that king, { 2 Kings 23:37 ; Jeremiah 22:13 sqq.} and the serious blow inflicted upon the reforming party by the death of Josiah; as by assuming that the prophecy belongs to the years before the extirpation of idolatry in the eighteenth year of the latter sovereign. And now let us take a rapid glance at the salient points of this remarkable utterance. The people are standing in the outer court, with their faces turned toward the court of the priests, in which stood the holy house itself. { Psalm 5:7 } The prophetic speaker stands facing them, "in the gate of the Lord’s house," the entry of the upper or inner court, the place whence Baruch was afterwards to read another of his oracles to the people. { Jeremiah 36:10 } Standing here, as it were between his audience and the throne of Iahvah, Jeremiah acts as visible mediator between them and their God. His message to the worshippers who throng the courts of Iahvah’s sanctuary is not one of approval. He does not congratulate them upon their manifest devotion, upon the munificence of their offerings, upon their ungrudging and unstinted readiness to meet an unceasing drain upon their means. His message is a surprise, a shock to their self-satisfaction, an alarm to their slumbering consciences, a menace of wrath and destruction upon them and their holy place. His very first word is calculated to startle their self-righteousness, their misplaced faith in the merit of their worship and service. "Amend your ways and your doings!" Where was the need of amendment? they might ask. Were they not at that moment engaged in a function most grateful to Iahvah? Were they not keeping the law of the sacrifices, and were not the Levitical priesthood ministering in their order, and receiving their due share of the offerings which poured into the temple day by day? Was not all this honour enough to satisfy the most exacting of deities? Perhaps it was, had the deity in question been merely as one of the gods of Canaan. So much lip service, so many sacrifices and festivals, so much joyous revelling in the sanctuary, might be supposed to have sufficiently appeased one of the common Baals, those half-womanish phantoms of deity whose delight was imagined to be in feasting and debauchery. Nay, so much zeal might have propitiated the savage heart of a Molech. But the God of Israel was not as these, nor one of these; though His ancient people were too apt to conceive thus of Him, and certain modern critics have unconsciously followed in their wake. Let us see what it was that called so loudly for amendment, and then we may become more fully aware of the gulf that divided the God of Israel from the idols of Canaan, and His service from all other service. It is important to keep this radical difference steadily before our minds, and to deepen the impression of it, in days when the effort is made by every means to confuse Iahvah with the gods of heathendom, and to rank the religion of Israel with the lower surrounding systems. Jeremiah accuses his countrymen of flagrant transgression of the universal laws of morality. Theft, murder, adultery, perjury, fraud, and covetousness, slander and lying and treachery, { Jeremiah 7:9 ; Jeremiah 9:3-8 } are charged upon these zealous worshippers by a man who lived amongst them, and knew them well, and could be contradicted at once if his charges were false. He tells them plainly that, in virtue of their frequenting it, the temple is become a den of robbers. And this trampling upon the common rights of man has its counterpart and its climax in treason against God, in "burning incense to the Baal, and walking after other gods whom they know not"; { Jeremiah 7:9 } in an open and shameless attempt to combine the worship of the God who had from the outset revealed Himself to their prophets as a "jealous," i.e., an exclusive God, with the worship of shadows who had not revealed themselves at all, and could not be "known," because devoid of all character and real existence. They thus ignored the ancient covenant which had constituted them a nation. { Jeremiah 7:23 } In the cities of Judah, in the streets of the very capital, the cultus of Ashtoreth, the Queen of Heaven, the voluptuous Canaanite goddess of love and dalliance, was busily practised by whole families together, in deadly provocation of the God of Israel. The first and great commandment said, Thou shalt love Iahvah thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. And they loved and served and followed and sought after and worshipped the sun and the moon and the host of heaven, the objects adored by the nation that was so soon to enslave them. { Jeremiah 8:2 } Not only did a worldly, covetous, and sensual priesthood connive in the restoration of the old superstitions which associated other gods with Iahvah, and set up idol symbols and altars within the precincts of His temple, as Manasseh had 2 Kings 21:4-5 ; they went further than this in their "syncretism," or rather in their perversity, their spiritual blindness, their wilful misconception of the God revealed to their fathers. They actually confounded Him-the Lord "who exercised lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, and delighted in" the exhibition of these qualities by His worshippers { Jeremiah 9:24 } -with the dark and cruel sun god of the Ammonites. They "rebuilt the high places of the Tophet, in the valley of ben Hinnom," on the north side of Jerusalem, "to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire"; if by means so revolting to natural affection they might win back the favour of heaven-means which Iahvah "commanded not, neither came they into His mind." { Jeremiah 7:31 } Such fearful and desperate expedients were doubtless first suggested by the false prophets and priests in the times of national adversity under king Manasseh. They harmonised only too well with the despair of a people who saw in a long succession of political disasters the token of Iahvah’s unforgiving wrath. That these dreadful rites were not a "survival" in Israel, seems to follow from the horror which they excited in the allied armies of the two kingdoms, when the king of Moab, in the extremity of the siege, offered his eldest son as a burnt offering on the wall of his capital before the eyes of the besiegers. So appalled were the Israelite forces by this spectacle of a father’s despair, that they at once raised the blockade, and retreated homeward. { 2 Kings 3:27 } It is probable, then, that the darker and bloodier aspects of heathen worship were of only recent appearance among the Hebrews, and that the rites of Molech had not been at all frequent or familiar, until the long and harassing conflict with Assyria broke the national spirit and inclined the people, in their trouble, to welcome the suggestion that costlier sacrifices were demanded, if Iahvah was to be propitiated and His wrath appeased. Such things were not done, apparently, in Jeremiah’s time; he mentions them as the crown of the nation’s past offences; as sins that still cried to heaven for vengeance, and would surely entail it, because the same spirit of idolatry which had culminated in these excesses, still lived and was active in the popular heart. It is the persistence in sins of the same character which involves our drinking to the dregs the cup of punishment for the guilty past. The dark catalogue of forgotten offences witnesses against us before the Unseen Judge, and is only obliterated by the tears of a true repentance, and by the new evidence of a change of heart and life. Then, as in some palimpsest, the new record covers and conceals the old; and it is only if we fatally relapse, that the erased writing of our misdeeds becomes visible again before the eye of Heaven. Perhaps also the prophet mentions these abominations because at the time he saw around him unequivocal tendencies to the renewal of them. Under the patronage or with the connivance of the wicked king Jehoiakim, the reactionary party may have begun to set up again the altars thrown down by Josiah, while their religious leaders advocated both by speech and writing a return to the abolished cultus. At all events, this supposition gives special point to the emphatic assertion of Jeremiah, that Iahvah had not commanded nor even thought of such hideous rites. The reference to the false labours of the scribes { Jeremiah 8:8 } lends colour to this view. It may be that some of the interpreters of the sacred law actually anticipated certain writers of our own day, in putting this terrible gloss upon the precept, "The firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto Me." { Exodus 22:29 } The people of Judah were misled, but they were willingly misled. When Jeremiah declares to them, "Lo, ye are trusting, for your part, upon the words of delusion, so that ye gain no good!" { Jeremiah 7:8 } it is perhaps not so much the smooth prophecies of the false prophets as the fatal attitude of the popular mind, out of which those misleading oracles grew, and which in turn they aggravated, that the speaker deprecates. He warns them that an absolute trust in the " praesentia Numinis " is delusive; a trust, cherished like theirs independently of the condition of its justification, viz., a walk pleasing to God. "What! will ye break all My laws, and then come and stand with polluted hands before Me in this house, { Isaiah 1:15 } which is named after Me ‘Iahvah’s House’, { Isaiah 4:1 } and reassure yourselves with the thought, We are absolved from the consequences of all these abominations?" ( Jeremiah 7:9-10 ). Lit. "We are saved, rescued, secured, with regard to having done all these abominations": cf. Jeremiah 2:35 . But perhaps, with Ewald, we should point the Hebrew term differently, and read, "Save us!" "to do all these abominations," as if that were the express object of their petition, which would really ensue, if their prayer were granted: a fine irony. For the form of the verb. {cf. Ezekiel 14:14 } They thought their formal devotions were more than enough to counterbalance any breaches of the decalogue; they laid that flattering unction to their souls. They could make it up with God for setting His moral law at naught. It was merely a question of compensation. They did not see that the moral law is as immutable as laws physical; and that the consequences of violating or keeping it are as inseparable from it as pain from a blow, or death from poison. They did not see that the moral law is simply the law of man’s health and wealth, and that the transgression of it is sorrow and suffering and death. "If men like you," argues the prophet, "dare to tread these courts, it must be because you believe it a proper thing to do. But that belief implies that you hold the temple to be something other than what it really is; that you see no incongruity in making the House of Iahvah a meeting place of murderers. {" spelunca latronum " Matthew 21:13 } That you have yourselves made it, in the full view of Iahvah, whose seeing does not rest there, but involves results such as the present crisis of public affairs; the national danger is proof that He has seen your heinous misdoings." For Iahvah’s seeing brings a vindication of right, and vengeance upon evil. { 2 Chronicles 24:22 ; Exodus 3:7 } He is the watchman that never slumbers nor sleeps; the eternal Judge, Who ever upholds the law of righteousness in the affairs of man, nor suffers the slightest infringement of that law to go unpunished. And this unceasing watchfulness, this perpetual dispensation of justice, is really a manifestation of Divine mercy; for the purpose of it is to save the human race from self-destruction, and to raise it ever higher in the scale of true well-being, which essentially consists in the knowledge of God and obedience to His laws. Jeremiah gives his audience further ground for conviction. He points to a striking instance in which conduct like theirs had involved results such as his warning holds before them. He establishes the probability of chastisement by a historical parallel. He offers them, so to speak, ocular demonstration of his doctrine. "I also, lo, I have seen, saith Iahvah!" Your eyes are fixed on the temple; so are Mine, but in a different way. You see a national palladium; I see a desecrated sanctuary, a shrine polluted and profaned. This distinction between God’s view and yours is certain: "for, go ye now to My place which was at Shiloh, where I caused My Name to abide at the outset" (of your settlement in Canaan); "and see the thing that I have done to it, because of the wickedness of My people Israel" (the northern kingdom). There is the proof that Iahvah seeth not as man seeth; there, in that dismantled ruin, in that historic sanctuary of the more powerful kingdom of Ephraim, once visited by thousands of worshippers like Jerusalem today, now deserted and desolate, a monument of Divine wrath. The reference is not to the tabernacle, the sacred Tent of the Wanderings, which was first set up at Nob { 1 Samuel 22:11 } and then removed to Gibeon, { 2 Chronicles 1:3 } but obviously to a building more or less like the temple, though less magnificent. The place and its sanctuary had doubtless been ruined in the great catastrophe, when the kingdom of Samaria fell before the power of Assyria (721 B.C.). In the following words ( Jeremiah 7:13-15 ) the example is applied. "And now"-stating the conclusion-"because of your having done all these deeds" ("saith Iahvah," LXX omits), "and because I spoke unto you" ("early and late," LXX omits), "and ye hearkened not, and I called you and ye answered not": { Proverbs 1:24 } "I will do unto the house upon which My Name is called, wherein ye are trusting, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers-as I did unto Shiloh." Some might think that if the city fell, the holy house would escape, as was thought by many like-minded fanatics when Jerusalem was beleaguered by the Roman armies seven centuries later: but Jeremiah declares that the blow will fall upon both alike; and to give greater force to his words, he makes the judgment begin at the house of God. (The Hebrew reader will note the dramatic effect of the disposition of the accents. The principal pause is placed upon the word "fathers," and the reader is to halt in momentary suspense upon that word, before he utters the awful three which close the verse: "as I-did to-Shiloh." The Massorets were masters of this kind of emphasis.) "And I will cast you away from My Presence, as I cast" ("all": LXX omits) "your kinsfolk, all the posterity of Ephraim." { 2 Kings 17:20 } Away from My Presence: far beyond the bounds of that holy land where I have revealed Myself to priests and prophets, and where My sanctuary stands; into a land where heathenism reigns, and the knowledge of God is not; into the dark places of the earth, that lie under the blighting shadow of superstition, and are enveloped in the moral midnight of idolatry. " Projiciam vos a facie mea ." The knowledge and love of God-heart and mind ruled by the sense of purity and tenderness and truth and right united in an Ineffable Person, and enthroned upon the summit of the universe-these are light and life for man; where these are, there is His Presence. They who are so endowed behold the face of God, in Whom is no darkness at all. Where these spiritual endowments are nonexistent; where mere power, or superhuman force, is the highest thought of God to which man has attained; where there is no clear sense of the essential holiness and love of the Divine Nature; there the world of man lies in darkness that may be felt; there bloody rites prevail; there harsh oppression and shameless vices reign: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. "And thou, pray thou not for this people," { Jeremiah 18:20 } "and lift not up for them outcry nor prayer, and urge not Me, for I hear thee not. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather sticks, and the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough, to make sacred buns" { Jeremiah 44:19 } "for the Queen of Heaven, and to pour libations to other gods, in order to grieve." { Deuteronomy 32:16 ; Deuteronomy 32:21 } "Is it Me that they grieve? saith Iahvah; is it not themselves" (rather), "in regard to the shame of their own faces" ( Jeremiah 7:16-19 ). From one point of view, all human conduct may be said to be "indifferent" to God; He is self-sufficing, and needs not our praises, our love, our obedience, any more than He needed the temple ritual and the sacrifices of bulls and goats. Man can neither benefit nor injure God; he can only affect his own fortunes in this world and the next, by rebellion against the laws upon which his welfare depends, or by a careful observance of them. In this sense, it is true that wilful idolatry, that treason against God, does not "provoke" or "grieve" the Immutable One. Men do such things to their own sole hurt, to the shame of their own faces: that is, the punishment will be the painful realisation of the utter groundlessness of their confidence, of the folly of their false trust; the mortification of disillusion, when it is too late. That Jeremiah should have expressed himself thus is sufficient answer to those who pretend that the habitual anthropomorphism of the prophetic discourses is anything more than a mere accident of language and an accommodation to ordinary style. In another sense, of course, it is profoundly true to say that human sin provokes and grieves the Lord. God is Love; and love may be pained to its depths by the fault of the beloved, and stirred to holy indignation at the disclosure of utter unworthiness and ingratitude. Something corresponding to these emotions of man may be ascribed, with all reverence, to the Inscrutable Being who creates man "in His own image," that is, endowed with faculties capable of aspiring towards Him, and receiving the knowledge of His being and character. "Pray not thou for this people for I hear thee not!" Jeremiah was wont to intercede for his people. { Jeremiah 11:14 ; Jeremiah 18:20 ; Jeremiah 15:1 ; cf. 1 Samuel 12:23 } The deep pathos which marks his style, the minor key in which almost all his public utterances are pitched, proves that the fate which he saw impending over his country grieved him to the heart. "Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought"; and this is eminently true of Jeremiah. A profound melancholy had fallen like a cloud upon his soul; he had seen the future, fraught as it was with suffering and sorrow, despair and overthrow, slaughter and bitter servitude; a picture in which images of terror crowded one upon another, under a darkened sky, from which no ray of blessed hope shot forth, but only the lightnings of wrath and extermination. Doubtless his prayers were frequent, alive with feeling, urgent, imploring, full of the convulsive energy of expiring hope. But in the midst of his strong crying and tears, there arose from the depths of his consciousness the conviction that all was in vain. "Pray not thou for this people, for I will not hear thee." The thought stood before him, sharp and clear as a command; the unuttered sound of it rang in his ears, like the voice of a destroying angel, a messenger of doom, calm as despair, sure as fate. He knew it was the voice of God. In the history of nations as in the lives of individuals there are times when repentance, even if possible, would be too late to avert the evils which long periods of misdoing have called from the abyss to do their penal and retributive work. Once the dike is undermined, no power on earth can hold back the flood of waters from the defenceless lands beneath. And when a nation’s sins have penetrated and poisoned all social and political relations, and corrupted the very fountains of life, you cannot avert the flood of ruin that must come, to sweep away the tainted mass of spoiled humanity; you cannot avert the storm that must break to purify the air, and make it fit for men to breathe again. "Therefore"-because of the national unfaithfulness-"thus said the Lord Iahvah, Lo, Mine anger and My fury are being poured out toward this place-upon the men, and upon the cattle, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it will burn, and not be quenched!" { Jeremiah 7:20 } The havoc wrought by war, the harrying and slaying of man and beast, the felling of fruit trees and firing of the vineyards, are intended; but not so as to exclude the ravages of pestilence and droughts { Jeremiah 14:1-22 } and famine. All these evils are manifestations of the wrath of Iahvah., cattle and trees and "the fruit of the ground," i.e., of the cornlands and vineyards, are to share in the general destruction, {cf. Hosea 4:3 } not, of course, as partakers of man’s guilt, but only by way of aggravating his punishment. The final phrase is worthy of consideration, because of its bearing upon other passages. "It will burn and not be quenched," or "it will burn unquenchably." The meaning is not that the Divine wrath once kindled will go on burning forever; but that once kindled, no human or other power will be able to extinguish it, until it has accomplished its appointed work of destruction. "Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel: Your holocausts add ye to your common sacrifices, and eat ye flesh!" that is, Eat flesh in abundance, eat your fill of it! Stint not yourselves by devoting any portion of your offerings wholly to Me. I am as indifferent to your "burnt offerings," your more costly and splendid gifts, as to the ordinary sacrifices, over which you feast and make merry with your friends. { 1 Samuel 1:4 ; 1 Samuel 1:13 } The holocausts which you are now burning on the altar before Me will not avail to alter My settled purpose. "For I spake not with your fathers, nor commanded them, in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, concerning matters of holocaust and sacrifice, but this matter commanded I them, ‘Hearken ye unto My voice, so become I God to you, and you-ye shall become to Me a people; and walk ye in all the way that I shall command you, that it may go well with you!"’ ( Jeremiah 7:22-23 ) cf. Deuteronomy 6:3 . Those who believe that the entire priestly legislation as we now have it in the Pentateuch is the work of Moses, may be content to find in this passage of Jeremiah no more than an extreme antithetical expression of the truth that to obey is better than sacrifice. There can be no question that from the outset of its history. Israel, in common with all the Semitic nations, gave outward expression to its religious ideas in the form of animal sacrifice. Moses cannot have originated the institution, he found it already in vogue, though he may have regulated the details of it. Even in the Pentateuch, the term "sacrifice" is nowhere explained; the general understanding of the meaning of it is taken for granted. {see Exodus 12:27 ; Exodus 23:18 } Religious customs are of immemorial use, and it is impossible in most cases to specify the period of their origin. But while it is certain that the institution of sacrifice was of extreme antiquity in Israel as in other ancient peoples, it is equally certain, from the plain evidence of their extant writings, that the prophets before the Exile attached no independent value either to it or to any other part of the ritual of the temple. We have already seen how Jeremiah could speak of the most venerable of all the symbols of the popular faith. { Jeremiah 3:16 } Now he affirms that the traditional rules for the burnt offerings and other sacrifices were not matters of special Divine institution, as was popularly supposed at the time. The reference to the Exodus may imply that already in his day there were written narratives which asserted the contrary; that the first care of the Divine Saviour after He had led His people through the sea was to provide them with an elaborate system of ritual and sacrifice, identical with that which prevailed in Jeremiah’s day. The important verse already quoted { Jeremiah 8:8 } seems to glance at such pious fictions of the popular religious teachers: "How say ye, We are wise, and the instruction" (A.V. "law") "of Iahvah is with us? But behold for lies hath it wrought-the lying pen of the scribes!" It is, indeed, difficult to see how Jeremiah or any of his predecessors could have done otherwise than take for granted the established modes of public worship, and the traditional holy places. The prophets do not seek to alter or abolish the externals of religion as such; they are not so unreasonable as to demand that stated rites and traditional sanctuaries should be disregarded, and that men should worship in the spirit only, without the aid of outward symbolism of any sort, however innocent and appropriate to its object it might seem. They knew very well that rites and ceremonies were necessary to public worship; what they protested against was the fatal tendency of their time to make these the whole of religion, to suppose that Iahvah’s claims could be satisfied by a due performance of these, without regard to those higher moral requirements of His law which the ritual worship might fitly have symbolised but could not rightly supersede. It was not a question with Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, whether or not Iahvah could be better honoured with or without temples and priests and sacrifices. The question was whether these traditional institutions actually served as an outward expression of that devotion to Him and His holy law, of that righteousness and holiness of life, which is the only true worship, or whether they were looked upon as in themselves comprising the whole of necessary religion. Since the people took this latter view, Jeremiah declares that their system of public worship is futile. "Hearken unto My voice": not as giving regulations about the ritual, bu

Stand in the gate...and proclaim. Jeremiah 7:1-7 Boldness in preaching Edward Irving. Some preachers are traders from port to port, following the customary and approved course; others adventure over the whole ocean of human concerns. The former are hailed by the common voice of the multitude, whose cause they hold, the latter blamed as idle, often suspected of hiding deep designs, always derided as having lost all guess of the proper course. Yet, of the latter class of preachers was Paul the apostle. Such adventurers, under God, this age of the world seems to us especially to want. There are ministers now to hold the flock in pasture and in safety, but where are they to make inroads upon the alien, to bring in the votaries of fashion, of literature, of sentiment, of policy, and of rank? Truly, it is not stagers who take on the customary form of their office and go the beaten round of duty, and then lie down content; but it is daring adventurers, who shall eye from the grand eminence of a holy and heavenly mind all the grievances which religion underlies, and all the obstacles which stay her course, and then descend with the self-denial and faith of an apostle to set the battle in array against them. ( Edward Irving. ) Enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. The character required in those the would worship God H. G. Salter. The heathen had a notion that the gods would not like the service and sacrifice of any but such as were like themselves, and therefore to the sacrifice of Hercules none were to be admitted that were dwarfs; and to the sacrifice of Bacchus, a merry god, none that were sad and pensive, as not suiting their genius. An excellent truth may be drawn from their folly: he that would like to please God must be like God. ( H. G. Salter. ) Amend your ways and your doings. Religion, the best security to Church and State E. Gibson, D. D. I. RELIGION, AND THE GENERAL PRACTICE OF IT IN A NATION, IS THE SUREST ESTABLISHMENT OF STATES AND KINGDOMS. 1. This is true in a natural way; because the duties of religion have a natural tendency to those things which are the foundations of that establishment, namely, peace, unity, and order. 2. But besides a natural tendency in virtue and goodness to the establishment of states and kingdoms, as many as believe religion must likewise believe that the general practice of it in a nation will be always attended with a supernatural blessing from God. For this is the result of all the declarations of God, as to the manner and rule of His dealings with mankind, whether persons or nations, that as many as faithfully serve and obey Him, shall be assuredly intituled to His favour and protection. II. IN EVERY NATION IT IS THE PROPER BUSINESS OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRATES, AS SUCH, TO VINDICATE AND MAINTAIN THE HONOUR OF RELIGION. And when I am speaking of authority, and the vigorous application thereof by the magistrate, I cannot omit one thing, which is a mighty enforcement of it, a good example; which, in its nature, is the most forcible way of teaching and correcting, and without which, neither the instructions of ministers, nor the authority of magistrates, can avail, to the effectual discouragement and suppression of vice. III. WITHOUT A SERIOUS REGARD TO THE MORAL AND SPIRITUAL DUTIES OF RELIGION, THE GREATEST ZEAL IN OTHER MATTERS, EVEN THOUGH IT BE FOR THE ESTABLISHED WORSHIP OF GOD, WILL NOT SECURE THE DIVINE FAVOUR AND PROTECTION, EITHER TO PERSONS OR NATIONS. The external rites of religion are good helps to devotion, and proper means of maintaining order and decency in the public worship; and a zeal to preserve them, with a serious regard to those pious and wise ends, is very laudable: but to believe that zeal for them will atone for a neglect of the moral and spiritual duties of religion is a dangerous error. ( E. Gibson, D. D. ) The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these The folly of trusting in external privileges Christian Observer. I. We are to show THE EXTREME FOLLY OF TRUSTING TO ANY RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES, WHILE OUR HEARTS REMAIN UNRENEWED AND OUR LIVES UNHOLY. On what ground can we rely on the continuance of God's favour under such circumstances? Should we, because a friend had conferred many benefits upon us, and forgiven us many offences, be justified in supposing that there would be no limit to his endurance? Yet the Jews — and their case is not singular — seemed to claim a special right to the continued favour of God, in virtue of their religious privileges; not considering that those privileges were a free gift; that they might at any time be withdrawn, without a shadow of injustice; and that while they lasted they were intended to operate, not as inducements to presumption, but as motives to love and thankfulness and obedience. They had in themselves no spiritual efficacy. Neither the character of God, nor His promises, held out any ground of hope on which to build such a conclusion. It would not have been consistent with His holiness, or wisdom, or justice, that the sinner should escape under the plea of any national or personal privileges, however great. And His promises, both temporal and spiritual, were all made in accordance with the same principle. "If ye walk in My statutes, and keep My commandments and do them...then I will walk among you, and I will be your God;...but if ye will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these commandments,...I will set My face against you." The whole tenor of God's providential dispensations is likewise to the same effect. And accordingly, the Jews, great as were their national mercies, found on numerous occasions that they were not exempt from the just displeasure of their Divine Governor. Yet, with all these proofs of God's righteous judgments, their constant cry was, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord": they caught hold, as it were, of the horns of the altar with unhallowed hands; and, notwithstanding the threatenings of the Almighty, were ever prone to trust in those external privileges. At the very time when they were committing the grievous enormities of which the prophet Jeremiah convicts them, they were zealous for the outward worship of God, and boasted highly of their religious profession. But could any folly be greater than that of supposing that this insincere worship could satisfy Him who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins? The prophet forcibly points out the extreme folly and delusiveness of such expectations: "Go," he says, "unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first; and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel. And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the Lord, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called unto you, but ye answered not; therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by My name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh." Having thus considered the extreme folly of trusting to external privileges, while the heart is unrenewed and the life unholy, we are — II. TO SHOW THAT THIS FOLLY IS TOO COMMON IN ALL AGES; AND THAT WE OURSELVES, PERHAPS, ARE GUILTY OF IT. How many pride themselves in being zealous Protestants, or strict members of the Established Church, or regular attendants on public worship, while they live in the spirit of the world, and without any scriptural evidence of being in a state of favour with God! How many trust to the supposed orthodoxy of their faith; or to their zeal against infidelity, enthusiasm; while they are ignorant of the scriptural way of salvation, and indifferent to the great concern of making their calling and election sure! How many cherish a secret hope from the prayers of religious parents, the zeal and piety of their ministers. In short, innumerable are the ways in which persons deceive themselves on these subjects; fancying that the temple of the Lord is among them; and on this vain surmise remaining content and careless in their sins, and ignorant of all true religion. Now let us ask ourselves, in conclusion, whether such is our own case. On what are we placing our hopes for eternity? Are we resting upon anything superficial or external; upon anything short of genuine conversion of heart to God? True piety is not anything that can be done for us; it must be engrafted in us; it must dwell in our hearts, and show its blessed effects in our conduct. ( Christian Observer. ) If ye thoroughly amend. Jeremiah 7:5 Thorough amendment T. L. Cuyler, D. D. 1. Religion has to do with character and conduct. Religion is that which "binds," and it has a tremendous grip. It has to do not only with creeds, and forms, and rites, but with character and conduct. 2. Religion makes little of mere emotion. Some persons delight in the excitation of the sensibilities. The Master's word is, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments." This is the proof of genuine love. The mother takes her boy's kiss as a sign of emotion, but sees in his obedience the proof of principle, which is more than mere feeling.(1) The first characteristic of true religion is a right view of sin. Our prayer should be, "Wash me thoroughly," even as the spotted robe was in David's day cleansed in a vat with strong acid and alkali, mauled and bruised with mallet, till the stain was gone. God uses powerful methods to purify. Some dread to be born again, because they know that they will be required to thoroughly amend their ways, i.e. , "throughly," as the word was formerly spelled. True amendment goes through and through to the uttermost end — clear to the furthest limit.(2) There must be not only right views, but a clean sweep of sin. The people of Israel found that those they spared of idolatrous nations were thorns in their sides and pricks in their eyes. If we do not drive sin out, sin will drive us out. What we call little sins accumulate, as do the snowflakes which stop a locomotive. We shall arrest the power and blessing of God by tolerating small transgressions.(3) Thorough amendment comprehends character and conduct — what we are and what we do. It were useless to throw our prayers into a malarious swamp and leave the source, the well head, unclean. Pray that God's Spirit may create "a clean heart." Then follow conscience. The amendment enjoined in the text is a new life. Christ and the soul are firmly united, and He is the model. A little fibre, just enough to cling to the sacrament, is not enough. That Hamburg grapevine would not have yielded you those rich clusters if the branches had not been closely united to the vine. You are Christ's. You will hate sin because He abhors it. You will also heed Christ's demands on your time, your income, and your strength. 3. The text promises permanency; not merely a visit, but an abode where one can root and grow, work and worship, till transplanted to heaven. ( T. L. Cuyler, D. D. ) Reformation must be thorough H. W. Beecher. Some men, when they attempt to reform their lives, reform those things for which they do not much care. They take the torch of God's Word, and enter some indifferent chamber and the light blazes in, and they see that they are very sinful there; and then they look into another room, where they do not often stay, and are willing to admit that they are very sinful there; but they leave unexplored some cupboards and secret apartments where their life really is, and where they have stored up the things which are dearest to them, and which they will neither part with nor suffer rebuke for. ( H. W. Beecher. ) Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely...and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Jeremiah 7:9, 10 Fate T. T. Shore, M. A. "It is my fate," is the excuse for many a career of shame and sin. I do not think that most persons who practically rest satisfied with this explanation of the evil of their lives put it actually into words. They are content with a vague undefined feeling that some excuse or explanation of the sort is possible. Perhaps we should all escape many perils and evils if we more frequently took care to formulate our undefined thoughts into language, and carefully examine their nature. 1. Our idea of God's dealings with us is very largely influenced by the condition of the age in which we live. The language of inspiration will be interpreted by us according to the meaning which, in other directions, we already attach to the words which it must employ; and thus the government of communities by laws has so modified our thought of the Divine government that we no longer have the rude conception of a Divine Ruler acting from caprice; we have now rather the idea of a Being who acts through the operation of great universal laws. That conception of God is so far true, and that interpretation of the words of revelation so far accurate; but there has grown up with it the thought that God acts only thus, which is false. We attribute to the action of the All-wise God the imperfections — the necessary imperfections which belong to human institutions. Now, we must not transfer to God our own finality and failure. God's laws are universal and general; God's dealings with men are particular and individual As, in the physical world, we find that equilibrium is produced by the action of two equal and opposite forces, so in the moral world we have universal irresistible laws, and we have tender loving individualisation, and the resultant of the two is God's calm and equable government of men. Everywhere we see man demanding, and by his conduct showing that he possesses that liberty of action and power of control in the material world which, to palliate his sin, he denies to belong to him in the moral world. You know that the application of heat to certain substances will generate a powerful destructive force. You know such to be a physical law, and what do you do? Do you sit down and say, It is a law of nature, and I cannot resist it? No. You say, "I find it to be a law, and I shall take care either that it shall not come into operation, or if it does come into operation, I shall construct machinery to direct its force, and so make it operate only in the direction which I choose." You ascertain certain laws of health, that infection will spread a certain disease, and do you say, The disease must spread, I cannot fight against a law? No. You take care to keep the infection away from you, to disinfect, and so prevent the operation of that law; and yet that same man when he finds that there are places which will taint his moral nature with disease, that there are scenes or pleasures which will generate in his soul a destructive force, says, "I cannot help it, these things will act so; I have no liberty." You have no liberty to prevent their acting so on you, I admit, no more than you have power to prevent fire igniting powder; but you have power to keep away from them; you have power to prevent those conditions arising under which alone the law will operate. Oh! when we know and feel the evil in the physical world, we take every precaution against its recurrence. How much less zeal and determination do we display concerning our souls! 2. To say that you have a peculiar kind of nature which cannot resist a particular class of sin is to offer to God an excuse which you would never accept from your fellow man. You treat every one of your fellow men as having power to resist the inclination of his natural disposition, so far as its indulgence would be injurious to you. If a man rob you or assault you, no explanation of a natural desire for acquisition or for aggression would be listened to by you as a reasonable excuse. To admit the truth of such principles of uncontrollable natural impulse would at once shake society and destroy all human government. And do you think that such excuses as you would not admit are to be accepted as excuses for, or even explanations of those sins which do not happen to fall within the category of legal crimes, but which, much more than those crimes for which the law imprisons and hangs, are destroying the moral order of God's universe, and outraging the highest and noblest principles of truth, and purity, and love? But it cannot be denied that we have strong natural dispositions and passions which we have been given independently of ourselves, and for the possession of which we cannot with justice be held responsible? Certainly — and you never find fault with a man for any faculty or temper which he may have — but you do hold him responsible for the direction and control of it. We can point to countless noble careers to show how the strong impulses of individual natures are indeed irresistible, but their action is controllable. The great heroes whom we justly reverence, who rise above us as some snow-capped mountain towers above the dead level of a low-lying plain, are not those who have destroyed, but those who have preserved and used aright the natural impulses and passions which had been given them. That is the true meaning of such lives as those of St. Paul, or Martin Luther — St. Augustine, or John Bunyan. Ay, and there are many still amongst us who use their natural dispositions and their natural affections, their natural passions — even their natural beauty, which might have been used to lure souls to hell — to win many a one to a nobler and purer life. What a solemn responsibility, then, is the right use of our natural disposition and talents, for others as well as for ourselves. To you, my young friends, especially, I would say, Do try and begin early to recognise the solemnity of life. Do not be downhearted or dismayed if, after you have felt the power of Christ's death, and when you would do good, evil is present with you. Do not let such moments harden you. Try and realise then all the love and mercy and tenderness with which the crucified Lord looks upon you, as He once looked on the fallen apostle, and, like him, "go forth and weep bitterly." Then it will be well with you. Sin shall not reign in you, though for the moment it seems to have conquered you. ( T. T. Shore, M. A. ) On necessity H. W. Beecher. I. MEN ARE VERY FOND OF ASCRIBING THEIR SINS TO THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE DEVIL, and in such a way as, in the main, to put the responsibility upon him. It is surely taught in the Word of God that evil spirits do foment wickedness; that they suggest it; that they persuade men to it. It is not taught that they infuse it, and perform it in men. It is taught that Satan persuades men to sin; but the men do the sinning — not he. The power of temptation depends upon two elements: first, the power of presenting inducement or motive on the part of the tempter; and, secondly and mainly, the strength in the victim of the passion to which this motive is presented. No one could tempt to pride a man that had not already a powerful tendency to pride. The chord must be there before the hand of the harper can bring out the tone. No one could be tempted to avarice that had not a predisposition to the love of property. No man could be tempted to hatred, or to cruelty, or to appetites, one or many, unless there pre-existed a tendency in that direction. Hence, the simple fact of temptation is, that you do wrong, while Satan merely asks you to do it. It is your act. It may be his suggestion, it may be his thought; but it is your performance. And you do it with plenary freedom, urged, fevered, it may be, by him. II. MEN RELIEVE THEMSELVES, OR SEEK TO DO SO, FROM THE SENSE OF GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY, BY ATTRIBUTING THEIR SINS TO THEIR FELLOW MEN. They admit the wrong, but they put in the plea that the circumstances were such that they could not help committing it. The example and impunity of other men in transgression are pleaded, the persuasions and influences of other men are pleaded, certain relations to other men are pleaded, as if these things were compulsory. Men attribute their sins to public sentiment, to the customs of the times, to the habits of the community. Are they intemperate? Intemperance is customary in the circle in which they walk. Are they unscrupulous in their dealings? Unscrupulousness is the law of the profession which they follow. And when they have been charged with continuous sinning — with the violation of conscience, with the violation of purity, with the violation of temperance, with the violation of honesty or honour — they have still pleaded, "Yes, we have sinned; but we are not exceptional; we do not stand alone; we are nouns of multitude; all men do these things" — as if the inference was, "Because all men do them, they are not so culpable in us." Men may sin by wholesale; but they are punished by retail. There were never such dividends in any bank on earth as are apportioned in the court of conscience. There every man not only is particeps criminis in the transgression which he joins others in committing, but he is responsible for the whole sin, though thousands and millions participate with him in it. It is an exceedingly fashionable habit at present to put upon society the guilt of the transgressions of men. Are men idle, and is there deduced from idleness the accustomed fruit? Society has not made the suitable provisions for these men, or they would not have been idle! Are men insubordinate, and do they violate the laws? Society has not made proper laws for such men! They have not by society been rightly educated, or they would not have been insubordinate! Are men full of vices and crimes that spring from fertile ignorance? Society, as a schoolmaster, ought not to have let them be ignorant! Do men murder? Society is to blame! Do men steal? Society is the responsible scapegoat for thieves! You shall find philosophers on every side that wag their heads and say, "Now you see that society does not fulfil its duties and functions: society ought to have stepped these things." I will admit that in society there are many things that men ought to do which are left undone, and many things that they ought to leave undone which are done; but to say that upon society is to be put the responsibilities of the individual characters of all its citizens, is to imply that you give to society power to enforce those responsibilities; and if you give to society that power, you give it a power such as was never con. templated even by the extremest despotic theory of government. Society may in some instances be the tempter, and may in some instances have its individual part in the wrong-doing of its citizens; but it does not take away from any man that does wrong, the whole, undivided, personal responsibility of that wrong. III. THE LAST CLASS OF THE CATEGORY OF EXCUSES IS THAT OF FATALITY. "We are delivered to commit sin; we are bound over to do it; we cannot help doing it" — so say some men. On the one hand, men are apt to be jealous of their liberty; but to avoid responsibility for transgression they disclaim their liberties, and plead a want of power to choose; a want of power to do that which they have chosen; or a want of power to reject that which they have determined to reject. 1. One class of men regard thought and volition as the inevitable effect of natural causes. They are no more avoidable, they say, than are the phenomena of nature. Effect follows cause as irresistibly in the one case as in the other. And so man is just as helpless as a mill wheel, which is made to turn over, and over, and over, by a power that is not under its control. Against this theory, we oppose the universal consciousness of men in the earlier stages of their moral character. Men know perfectly well that they have no plenary liberty; that they have only limited liberty. It is certainly true that, if blue is presented to my eye, I cannot prevent the impression of blue being made on my mind. It is true that, if light is presented to my eye, I cannot prevent the inevitable effect that light produces. But if, for any reason I prefer not to have light, although when it shines I cannot hinder the happening of its actual effects, I can prevent my eyes from coming where the light falls. There is profound Divine wisdom in that part of the Lord's Prayer which seems strange to our youth — "Lead us not into temptation." Well might powder pray, "Deliver me from the fire"; for if the fire touches it, there is no help for it — there must be an explosion. And there are many circumstances in which, if inflamed passions, inflamed tempers, in the soul's warfare in life, subject themselves to certain causes, they will lead a man to sin. Therefore the plea is, "Lead me not into temptation: let it not come upon me." Men are responsible for their volitions, and for those conditions which produce volitions — and this is the opinion of men generally. 2. A more frequent and more subtle plea of irresponsibility is founded on the modern doctrine of organisation. One man says, "I may lie; but I was delivered to do it when I was created with such an inordinate development of secretiveness." Another man says, "I may be harsh and cruel; but I was delivered to be so from my mother's womb; there is such immense destructiveness in my organisation." Another man says, "You that have largo intellectual developments, and are able to see and foresee, may be responsible for falling into sin; but I have no such development; I cannot foresee anything; I have to take things as they find me, and I am not responsible." At first it would look as though this was very rational; but it is not. It is not phrenological. It is not philosophical. And that is not all; the men that use these pleas do not themselves believe in them. There are abundant proofs of the falsity of the claim which they set up; but for my present purpose it is quite sufficient to say that, when men sin and plead fatalism or organisation as a justification of their wrong-doing, they do not believe the doctrine that they themselves advance. No man will accept an insult from another on the plea that that other man cannot help giving it. If a man deals you a blow in the street, not accidentally, but because, as he says, he is naturally irritable, having large combativeness, and cannot help it, you do not listen calmly to the explanation, and say, "All right, sir; all right." No man admits for one single moment any such thing as that men are to be excused for all sorts of misdemeanours, because they happen to be peculiarly organised. The whole intercourse of man with man would be destroyed; the community would be dissolved; society would rush, like turbulent streams in the midst of spring rains, down to destruction, if you were to take away the doctrine that a man can control his conduct, his thought, his will. It does not follow that, because a man follows his strongest faculty, he must follow it to do wrong with it. Here is the fallacy — or one of the fallacies — which men run into. If a man has large secretiveness, it does not follow that he should lie. A man may be secretive, and not transgress. Secretiveness may leaven every faculty of the mind, and that without making one of them commit sin. It has a broad sphere, and a wholesome sphere; and if you say, "I must follow my strongest faculty," I reply that it does not follow that you must follow it contrary to moral law — contrary to what is right. Then another thing to be considered is the determining influence. A man is either sane or insane; and the distinction is this: If a man can no longer control his action by the antagonism of faculties; if, for instance, by the antagonism of reason and the affections he cannot control the passions; if the antagonism among themselves of the balanced faculties is so weak that the individual is incapable of governing himself, then he is insane. But if a man is not insane, there is in him a power proceeding from the balance of faculties, by which the erring one or ones may be controlled. So that every man, up to the point of insanity, has latent in him, if he pleases to educate it and exercise it, the power of controlling by other forces in his mind those which incline him to go wrong. Well, now, if there be this antagonistic power, it becomes a question of dynamics. Men say, "I have such a powerful tendency to go wrong that you ought not to punish me." It is not to punish you, so much as it is to stimulate the dormant faculty from whose inactivity that tendency proceeds, that you are made to suffer. If when my child is convicted of wrong, he having been tempted by vanity to break down into lies, I severely chastise him, and put him to shame, I inflict pain upon him not only as a punishment, but as a restorative. For I say to myself, if that child's conscience is so feeble, I must give him some stimulus. If his fear is so influential in the wrong way, I must spring it in the other direction. In other words, just the opposite of the popular pleading is true. The weaker the child is to resist evil, the more powerful must be the motive that is brought to bear upon him to do well. I remark, in view of these statements and reasonings — 1. Sin is bad enough ordinarily. I do not refer to its influence upon others, but to its reactionary influence upon our own moral state. Not only is it bad enough, but ordinarily it is made worse by the mode in which men treat it. If men stopped, whenever they did wrong, and measured it, and called it by its proper name, and turned away from it, although the process of recovery would be slow, it would in many respects be salutary, by way of strengthening and educating the mind; but when men commit sin, and institute a special plea, and defend their wrong-doing, and conceal it, and equivocate concerning it, they are corrupted even more by the defence than by the wrong-doing itself. How sad is that condition in which the compass will not point to the polar star! If there be fatal attractions on the ship, and if the shipmaster has steered by a compass that is not true in its directions, it would be better if he had thrown it overboard; because he has perfect confidence in it, and it has been lying all the time. And if the conscience, that is the compass of the soul, is perverted, and does not point to truth and right, and men are guiding themselves by it, how fatally are they going down to destruction! 2. What is the reason of the stress that is laid in the Word of God on the subject of confessing and forsaking sin? "Let him that stole steal no more," etc. "Confess your faults one to another." This doctrine was the great recuperative element. It was the preaching of John. It was the initial preaching of Christ. It was the preaching of the apostles. It is the annunciation of the Gospel. Confess and forsake your sin. Own that it is sin. Be honest with yourself. Make at last to yourself a full and clear acknowledgment that wrong is wrong. All men fail, and come short of their duty; but some justify, and palliate, and excuse, and deny, while others confess, and repent, and forsake — and these last are the true men. ( H. W. Beecher. ) Organisation and responsibility J. Parker, D. D. That men are variously constituted is a fact not merely profoundly interesting to the speculative philosopher, but of the greatest practical consequence to the Christian philanthropist. While the genus, man, is founded on a common basis, the individual is marked by characteristics singular to himself. Let us look at some special instances of peculiar organisation, and then consider them in relation to personal responsibility. For example, take the man whose dominating characteristic is acquisitiveness. That man's creed is a word, and that word is but a syllable: his creed is Get; nothing less, nothing more, — simply Get! With him benevolence is a matter of weights and scales; with him buying and selling and getting gain are the highest triumphs of mortal genius. Ask him why. Instantly he recurs to his organisation. He says, "God made me as I am; He did not consult me as to the constitution of my being; He made me acquisitive, and I must be faithful to my organisation; and I will go forward to meet Him at the day of judgment, and tell Him to His face that He has me as He made me, and I disclaim all responsibility." The organisation of another man predominates in the direction of combativeness. The man is litigious, quarrelsome, cantankerous, violent: Ask him why. He says, "I must be faithful to my constitution; my whole manhood is intensely combative; I did not make myself; God has made me as He made me, and I disown all laws of obligation." Here is a man with little hope. He sees a lion on every way; he dreads that ruin will be the end of every enterprise; he knows not the sweetness of contentme

7:1-16 No observances, professions, or supposed revelations, will profit, if men do not amend their ways and their doings. None can claim an interest in free salvation, who allow themselves in the practice of known sin, or live in the neglect of known duty. They thought that the temple they profaned would be their protection. But all who continue in sin because grace has abounded, or that grace may abound, make Christ the minister of sin; and the cross of Christ, rightly understood, forms the most effectual remedy to such poisonous sentiments. The Son of God gave himself for our transgressions, to show the excellence of the Divine law, and the evil of sin. Never let us think we may do wickedness without suffering for it. 7:17-20 The Jews took pride in showing zeal for their idols. Let us learn to be earnest in the service of our God, even from this bad example. Let us think it an honour to be employed in any work for God. Let us be as diligent ourselves, and as careful to teach our children the truths of God, as many are to teach the mysteries of iniquity. The direct tendency of this sin is malice against God, but it will hurt themselves. And they shall find there is no escaping. God's wrath is fire unquenchable. 7:21-28 God shows that obedience was required of them. That which God commanded was, Hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord thy God. The promise is very encouraging. Let God's will be your rule, and his favour shall be your happiness. God was displeased with disobedience. We understand the gospel as little as the Jews understood the law, if we think that even the sacrifice of Christ lessens our obligation to obey. 7:29-34 In token both of sorrow and of slavery, Jerusalem must be degraded, and separated from God, as she had been separated to him. The heart is the place in which God has chosen to put his name; but if sin has the innermost and uppermost place there, we pollute the temple of the Lord. The destruction of Jerusalem appears here very terrible. The slain shall be many; they having made it the place of their sin. Evil pursues sinners, even after death. Those who will not, by the grace of God, be cured of vain mirth, shall, by the justice of God, be deprived of all mirth. How many ruin their health and property without complaining, when engaged in Satan's service! May we learn to relish holy joys, and to sit loose to all others though lawful.